Electricity generation, transmission, and distribution systems include transmission lines and substations between generating plants and the consumers. Substations can perform many functions, and electric power may flow through several substations between the generating plant and the consumer. Natural disaster events, such as severe weather conditions including hurricanes, ice-storms, and tornadoes, as well as technological issues and faults and man-made issues including attacks, have the potential to cause damage to electrical systems including substations and transmission lines. These damages often disrupt electrical services and can result in a massive number of customer outages, taking from days to weeks to repair depending on the condition of the roads leading to the damage areas. As a result, two challenges in emergency preparedness and response, particularly during the hurricane season and other natural disasters are: how to determine the location and number of people that may be losing power and the duration of the power outage. The ability to accurately estimate the number of people that may be losing power in space and time during extreme weather conditions is valuable to emergency responders and utility companies. It helps the emergency responders to determine the number of people that may need their assistance and where they are located, as well as where the first responders need to stage their equipment and staff so that they can move in quickly to begin the recovery process once the extreme weather is over. It also helps the utility companies to determine ahead of time how many repair crews they would need for quickly restoring power, and where those repair crews should be stationed so that they are not delayed or trapped by the conditions on ground.
The spatial locations and capacities of new and existing electric substations are publicly available through the mandatory annual filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. However, the data do not include information about the geographical areas served by each substation and transmission line. Therefore, there is no mandatory source of information for substations and transmission lines service areas. This information is also not easily obtainable from utility companies due to restrictions on proprietary information. In cases where the utility companies are willing to share the information, there may be a need for a non-disclosure agreement and the requirements and formats of such an agreement vary from one company to another. This will become a huge burden on the partnering organization in view of the fact that there are about 3000 utility companies in the USA. There is a need for an approach that will mimic the distribution system as well as the incremental development of the distribution system.
Furthermore, the ability to predict when power would be restored to an area is generally a function of several factors such as the availability of internal resources (manpower and equipment) and extra resources from other utility companies or contracting agencies. However, the determinations of the number of repair crews and equipment needed depend on the situation on the ground such as, without limitation, the amount of debris that must be removed, the number of hours/days required for the area to be de-flooded, and the severity and coverage of the storm. Even though these numbers can be estimated, utility companies may not have the capability to estimate the size of the storm ahead of time. There is a continuing need for a methodology for estimating restoration time and strategies based on prior knowledge and restoration time from historic storm events.